Quote:
Originally Posted by gimpy117
yes, Aircraft are different...but heres the thing:
there are rules and regulations for the upkeep of aircraft. There are also rules specific for the airframe. This isn't just a bad spark plug, or a tire that blew out...this as the airframe itself, a 5'x3' section...something that just shouldn't happen if an aircraft is properly maintained and is flown off of what the book tells you hours wise.
The wall street journal also reported that the aircraft was due to checked for structural damage as well...but fatigue like this should have been caught last time
EDIT: also, this happened 2 years ago to another Southwest plane... history seems to repeating itself.
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Seriously? History repeating itself off of two examples?
Of course there are rules and regs for maintaining aircraft - just like there are for automobiles, buses, trains... they all must meet minimum standards for safe operation - it's why in many states a car undergoes some form of inspection at the time of purchase, and in some cases, on some form of regular schedule after as well. And like any other "government mandate" the rules are no doubt applied more stringently by some than others, and the details that are important to some are not important to others - it's the human element of everything we do. Hell, the US changed enlisted submarine lookouts every thirty minutes just because of the human element - getting tired, bored, distracted - all contributed to missing things.
We need to be clear from the beginning that the cause of the incident has not yet been determined to be fatigue, and even if it is, we are talking about this individual case, not "history repeating itself." After all, there are hundreds of 737-300s in service today, and they're not falling apart - it's a well-made aircraft, but there are a LOT of things that factor into part failure - including the possibility of fatigue, but also including the factor that sometimes, things break. Metal flaws in the material, the rivets; a bad pressure seal... things break all the time. And sometimes in the same place. My car's passenger side headlight has burned out twice in the last three years. No one can find a wiring issue. So why have I replaced a part twice in three years that I hadn't had to replace in the seven years prior? Was that first headlight of ten years ago some sort of super-headlight with a big S on it? If so, then I must have its father on the left side, cause that one's still going strong after ten years.
Flight 812's aircraft's last major downtime inspection was March of 2010, from what I understand. Again, go back to my earlier statement: Drive your vehicle 600m a day for 365 days, with only a few hours of downtime for maintenance, and tell me if something doesn't require work. And that's in a car that doesn't experience the stresses of the pressurization/depressurization cycle a few times a day, or travel at some 300+ kph. Clearly, these aircraft are not falling out of the sky all around us, so somebody's doing something right somewhere.
SWA has downchecked their 300s that have not undergone skin replacement for inspection, at great financial loss to them both immediate and somewhat over a longer term, should passengers lose confidence in the airline. They've already been gigged once in the past by the FAA failure to comply with inspection protocol, a failure which the FAA allegedly colluded with.
Regardless, there is extraordinary danger in assigning blame to anyone at this stage of the game. Southwest MAY be culpable in this incident, or for factors leading to this incident. But the fact remains that they may not be, too.
The danger is in pseudo logic that leads us to somewhere, someone getting John Q. Lawmaker to step up and introduce some BS legislation earmarked onto some other equally stupid bill to "Engage the Aircraft Industry in Regulation, Monitoring, and Enforcement of Aircraft Skin Textures, Consistencies, Application, Exercise, Examination and Air Carriers Passenger Protection Act" or some equally stupid waste of taxpayer time and money trying to enforce a safety issue where there might not be one, and creating yet another layer of bureaucracy and paperwork and, purely by coincidence, higher flight fees. And THAT'S where history bloody repeats itself.